Doc
by Ichthyophobia
Summary: He knows ten thousand medical procedures, but not his name.
1. Fall

A.N.: The first part of this follows my earlier fic _Tadashi is Dead_. Not strictly necessary, but it'll make more sense.

* * *

><p>The days after he was found are fuzzy.<p>

_Concussion_, says the database in the back of his brain. And that makes sense, because there's a burned lump on his forehead that throbs when he touches it. It's getting better, though, and he hopes it'll take the headaches with it as it heals.

But concussion means dizziness, means headaches, but more importantly means his short term memory didn't make it over to long term. He knows that Buddy and Roger are the ones who found him, and they're still smug as anything over it, but he only knows that because they told him. Buddy says they thought he was drunk, and Roger backs him up on it. Dizzy and confused with slurred words and a hangover-reaction to light. Roger says it must've been one heck of a party.

It must've been, because he can't remember it. He can't remember anything yet.

_Blackout_, says the database in the back of his brain. But that doesn't make sense. This isn't a hangover, the symptoms don't work.

And he wouldn't have been _burned_ at a party.

_Mostly first degree. Partially second degree. Very small spots of third degree. _The database in his head tells him how to treat them, even with the throbbing concussion, and he remembers spending an hour laying near-naked in the water of a drainage ditch as Buddy and Roger made fun of him, until the burns were cool. They still hurt. But the damage won't go deeper.

He remembers very little of those first few days, mostly Buddy and Roger's teasing, and the cold air of the homeless camp. They call him the kid, since he can't remember his name. There's a static in his head that keeps him from minding too much.

Then the headaches start to fade, and the static clears, and he can remember things more than an hour ago. And he starts to wonder.

And can't remember.

* * *

><p>Where did you find me, he asks. The old service tunnels for the underground trains. But where? They don't know. They were lost. They were just as drunk as him! Do you remember anything about it? Nope, just tunnels. Do you remember when? Again, no.<p>

_Alcohol intoxication,_ says the database. But he doesn't say that.

He spends a lot of time thinking, trying to remember. Buddy finds some cardboard, makes a sign, leaves him with his burned face and slow smile on a street corner for a day, and then buys cheap Chinese takeout. It's not very good, he thinks faintly, but it leaves him full for a few hours and that at least is welcome.

They leave him to his thoughts overnight; the headaches won't let him sleep. His head is a mess, but a sort of structured one. Like a room filled with shelves, their contents mapped out by some logical scheme, but after an earthquake comes along and knocks everything off. The concussion knocked everything off the shelves, but it's all close to where it should be.

He wonders if he manages to put it all back together, he'll find other things buried somewhere.

Like his name.

Like his past. Like his family, if he has one. How old he is. How he got these burns. What _good_ Chinese food tastes like.

All sorts of things he'd like to know.

_Amnesia_, says the mess on the floor of his head.

He starts picking it all back up, examining it, sorting it. He thinks all day when Buddy leaves him on the corner with his sign again, and all night after a dinner of almost-expired rolls and soda when they camp under an overpass. He thinks as they walk, when a heavy rain floods their usual camp. He thinks on another corner, and next to a road, and in the lobby of an overcrowded shelter as Buddy tries to get them beds.

After a few days of thinking, the headaches finally let him pass out, and when he wakes up rested he realizes he's only learned one thing:

He knows a _lot_.

And he doesn't know how he's learned it.

He finally reads the sign Buddy gave him. Apparently for the past few days he's been _out of work, anything helps_. Which, he supposes, is true. Buddy's sign, _Wife, Three Kids, please help_, is not. Roger's sign, _Hungry_, is very much so.

_Malnutrition,_ says the much-better-sorted database in the back of his head. He keeps thinking, and ignores his stomach.

* * *

><p>They're on the move again, headed towards the entrance to a tunnel that Roger swears is warm at night, when a bar brawl bursts out of a side door and straight into Buddy. The fighting men don't realize they've picked up a bystander until his face is already bleeding.<p>

_Minor abrasion, facial lacerations, potential broken nose. _Buddy tries to put his fists up but only catches another blow, and it knocks him down – _fall_. He tries to catch himself, but falls wrong, and lands hard on his elbow – _potential broken arm_. Buddy collapses with a cry of pain, and his head hits the concrete – _potential concussion. _That draws the bartender out, who chases off the fighters with threats of police and wives and parole officers, and offers Buddy the use of a first aid kit. Roger goes ahead to make sure they have a spot in the tunnel.

The bartender might have a first aid kit, but he doesn't know how to use it. Buddy can't think of anything but to drink the pain away.

The task falls to him. He checks the arm – _No break, minor sprain – _and wraps it. He checks the nose – _Broken, not shattered – _and sets it with stiff tape and blunted toothpick halves. He washes the cuts – _deep, but not near an artery_ – and closes them with medical tape before bandaging them over.

By the time he's done, Buddy's calling him Doc.

They head down to the tunnel, Buddy much less sober than he was. He looks a mess, and acts one, and tells everyone how Doc saved his life. He didn't, but the story is better.

The nickname sticks.

* * *

><p>The air is turning to fall, and it's obvious at night. They stick to the tunnels at night, when they can – it keeps them out of the wind. He catches something that he can't quite identify – not the flu, there's no fever, not a cold, the cough is too deep. <em>Pneumonia<em> isn't something he can treat on his own, and he hopes desperately it's not that.

But he's fading in and out of consciousness, tired and sore as only sickness can make him. He curls up in a tunnel, far from Buddy and Roger. Maybe he won't infect anyone else this way.

He's near asleep when something prods at him. He pries his eyes open to see a black mesh tendril snaking past him. It's not a solid thing; it's hexagons of some kind of... tiny robot. Oh. Okay. It doesn't strike him as odd, and he's too tired to wonder why. He closes his eyes again, and lets it pass him by.

Another one prods him, and other, and eventually they wrap around him like a birds nest and set him aside. He watches them pass through half-lidded eyes. A man in a white and red mask moves with the swarm, and vanishes again. A pair of robot arms that he recognizes as being used for manufacturing are dragged after, then hundreds and hundreds of empty trash cans.

He falls asleep before they finish passing, and when he wakes again they are gone.

He feels better. It takes him a while to find Buddy and Roger again. They thought the swarm had got him. But he isn't afraid of the swarm.

He almost wonders why.

* * *

><p>His head is better now, and he tries to find a job. But it's hard, when <em>Doc<em> is the only name you can put on an application. No contact information, no history, no green card, no social.

No job.

He spends his time in the alleys, in the tunnels, and his nickname starts to become his job. People will share food if he'll set broken fingers, even if all he has is sticks and scotch tape. He saves up enough from a corner, and buys a first aid kit and a big bottle of hand sanitizer.

Food for bandages. A place by the fire for a tentative diagnosis. A pair of old gloves after the Heimlich maneuver saves a man's life. Buddy and Roger are always around, and they spread the word.

Hurt? Doc can help. Burned? Doc'll make it hurt less. Cuts, bruises, mystery cough. Doc knows. Doc can help. Go see Doc.

He's helping people, and he's _happy_. He finds a backpack, and keeps his supplies on hand for when folks walk up on street corners to ask if he's Doc.

The back of his brain tells him he could do more, that he _did_ do more. There's so much he can't cure that he _could. _That back at some point when he wasn't hungry and he didn't have scars, he was working on something to change everything.

He can't remember anything more.

* * *

><p>He listens; he has to listen, or he couldn't find people to help. But the gossip is strange lately. Ellis saw the swarm again. Karen says it threw a van into the bay once. The Cooper family saw it eat a junkyard. Paul says it lives on an island. Ivan saw it pull red birds from sea.<p>

There are theories. It's an experiment from Krei Industries. It's a hive mind. It's from space. The man in the mask is controlling it with ESP. It's a devil. It's a bad trip. It escaped from San Fransokyo tech when it burned. It's genetically engineered from ants.

It's dark, it's evil, it's the unholy union of shape and shadow.

He's the only one who's not afraid.

* * *

><p>There's a bust at Yama's. Police are everywhere, cars blocking alleyways, and the homeless scatter. <em>No Loitering, No Soliciting, No Panhandling<em> are rules they've all broken, and though cells are warm at night, the police are not gentle. They're not here for them, though, and he stays to watch as they round up the bettors.

They wheel out the robots as evidence, deactivated or torn to shreds. A part of his mind that he hasn't sorted yet perks up at that, and he scans their metal skeletons with a practiced eye.

Magnetic servos in one. A sparking mess of wiring. Plastic and aluminum frame – cheap, no wonder it lost. Ball bearings bleed from an axle. It takes two officers to carry out Yama's latest creation. It's built for brawn over maneuverability, well balanced, low center of gravity to be hard to tip, carbon fiber samurai armor. As heavy as its maker.

He wonders how he knows.

* * *

><p>He can't find Buddy and Roger, and he wonders if they were arrested in the bust. Without them, he has to rely on his own knowledge of the city, and he sticks to the tunnels.<p>

The swarm passes, now and again. People stop running from it; they just get out of its way. It doesn't want them. He watches it tear apart a junkyard from a distance, meets the dark eyes of the man in the mask. He feels like the man notices him; though there's no change in the man's behavior, the microbots always edge a little further from his feet no matter where he stands.

He's not the only one to notice. _The swarm avoids Doc._ The rumor spreads, and now he is welcomed by the sick and the superstitious both.

A weirder rumor, one day: A kid riding a miniature jet. It was red, says Old Bill, as Doc cleans the long scrape on his arm. Thought it was aliens and nearly dove off the bridge.

He wouldn't have given it much further thought. But Bill wasn't the only one to see it.

And he wonders.

* * *

><p>He's just finished removing a splint from a healed arm when the commotion starts. This place is a hub for the service tunnels, rounded off with a higher ceiling that makes everything echo, so it takes him a minute to find its source. A family runs to him, their youngest wrapping their arms around his knees. The swarm, the swarm, and it's <em>angry<em> this time. One of them has a scraped knee, and he treats as he listens. The man in the mask has never spoken to any of them, but he is now.

The masked man is angry. And the swarm is part of him.

_The swarm avoids Doc_, the murmur starts, and people start pulling him closer. A distant rumble echoes from the tunnel the family ran from. It grows into a roar. He finds himself at the head of the crowd. There's a mass of bodies behind him, trickling off into side tunnels and trying to climb to the surface, and he is the shield of the ones who stay. The tunnel is _black_.

Then the swarm rushes in, washing through the room like a tidal wave. The neat hexagon patterns of the tiny robots have been replaced by sharp triangles that snap into place with electric speed and obvious force, and they fill the room as a cage around the edges. They keep coming, keep spreading, the walls thickening by the meter until the room is claustrophobia-small, and then the white mask appears.

There aren't many people behind him now. They've mostly run; his alleged power over the swarm is no match for the swarm itself, especially not when it's bigger than they've ever seen it. Even he is beginning to be afraid. The swarm shouldn't be angry. But it _is._

The man in the red and white mask faces him, and emotion bleeds from the posture even in absence of a face. Angry. Desperate. The man is tense as a rope and shaking. _Elevated adrenaline levels. Lack of sleep. Psychologically unstable._ There are so many diagnoses that fly through his head and not one is helpful. He takes a careful step forwards towards the man.

And everything explodes.

"Get out!" The roar is everywhere, the voice from the man and the swarm. The tendrils become spikes and fly towards them. The walls collapse like a storm at sea. The whole thing is _lunging, _seething with inhuman anger. The others scatter. The world echoes with panic, and he takes a step back. "Get _out! _Damn ghost!"

The swarm lunges at him, an amorphous lump like an oversized fist, and he stumbles backwards and runs.

He makes it to the surface, gasping.

No one comes near him for the rest of the night.

* * *

><p>He spends most of the next day alone. <em>The swarm hates Doc<em> is the rumor now, and it's enough to keep people at a distance even in the light of day. Then the news spreads, in the late afternoon. Someone's fighting the swarm. The boy on the red jet. A three eyed monster. A yellow blur, a pink-armored girl, a man in green with knives in his arms. He finds his way to the scene to watch a hole in the sky suck up the world.

Then the swarm collapses. The hole in the sky falls with a crash. The tiny robots scatter like dust. The boy and the red jet – red robot – are nowhere to be seen. And the man in the mask no longer has his mask; he has a face, and it's familiar.

He wonders where he knows him from.

The boy emerges from the hole without the robot, clinging to a white rocket with a frosted window. The others rush over, and there's some uproar about _she's alive._ He's forced to step back when police and ambulances descend on the scene as thickly as the swarm had.

The heroes disappear. The girl from the white rocket is loaded into an ambulance. The man in the mask is forced into a police car. Their eyes meet.

That man could tell him who he is.

And the car drives away.


	2. Winter

He's an outcast for a while, until it's clear that the swarm isn't coming back. He spends the time thinking, putting his brain back together in a way he can't do when he's busy.

He knows ten thousand medical procedures. Most of them are simple, stitches and sanitation and methods of diagnosis. But there's something buried in them that's closer to memory than simple procedure.

Screens. Thin, jagged lines of text. Parenthesis everywhere. If, then. Variables. Pressure. Measured absorbance, converted to oxygenation. Tiny burns on his fingertips as he types.

Hands, _huge_ hands, white as clouds.

Days pass. The swarm isn't coming back. Injuries never went away.

People start seeking him out again.

He thinks about it when he has time.

* * *

><p>Fall passes into winter. There's nowhere to go, but trains run south, and those not bound here by bad jobs or old wounds trickle out of the city in empty box cars, headed for warmer places. He sees Buddy and Roger again, by the tracks. Waves goodbye.<p>

He considers leaving. But he's never been out of San Fransokyo, and he'd be on his own. Here, at least, he knows the streets.

The ocean moderates the temperature, but there are still bitterly cold days. He treats burns when people get too close to the fires, and frostbite when they stay too far away. His own clothes are too thin, too ragged. He picks up a secondhand coat from a drive at one of the shelters.

The shelter people know him now. He can get a bed at the shelter easier than most, and when he's there they provide tape and bandages and hand sanitizer, everything they can.

Doc is always welcome.

But he can't always get a bed, and he spends nights in the lobby and nights in the tunnels, then spends quite some time in a boarded-up warehouse close to the bay.

He treats burns and frostbite, and listens.

The red robot is back; someone saw it and the kid doing loops around the gateway bridge. Someone else saw the three-eyed monster jump over a building. The girl in yellow kept up with a high speed chase, and ended it. Laser-arms guy cut through some rubble in that last earthquake, got a family out. The pink girl saved someone from falling to their death.

Superheroes, people say. Someone jokes that Doc should join them.

He shakes his head, and listens.

* * *

><p>Where there are superheroes, there are super villains.<p>

A man in some kind of exoskeleton is terrorizing executives of a manufacturing company. He hears the rumors before anything substantial comes together; someone saw a rocket launched in an alleyway, an evil robot scattered broken glass all along an alleyway, a hulking devil with glowing hands scared some people in the tunnels.

He doesn't piece it together until a monster crashes through the warehouse wall.

It rolls head over heels, barely misses hitting someone, knocks over one of the burning trash cans, and finally flops bonelessly against a metal staircase. He rushes forwards even as the others are scrambling back and out.

"Duuude," says the monster, slurred and disjointed. "That was _wicked_."

Are you alright. Does anything hurt. Can you feel your feet. How do I get you out of this thing.

The monster loses consciousness halfway through a sentence. He finds the latch himself, opens up the monster's head, checks the spine as well as he can before pulling him out.

He's young, pale and unfashionable, dressed more like a stoner than a superhero, but more importantly _familiar._ The deeper part of his mind is rising, and he doesn't have time to pay attention. _Pulse, eye movement_, are you alright, can you hear me, how many fingers am I holding up. The monster-guy opens his eyes – _unfocused –_ and manages to slur out an answer, so concussed he might as well be drunk. Definite concussion. He checks the rest of him over.

The monster-guy, meanwhile, talks.

"Do... D'not be alarmed_,_" he slurs, with no volume control whatsoever. "This is not my real face and body. It is ju... just a suit."

"Can you feel this?"

"Yeah. Yeah dude, that's my foot." Monster-guy wiggles it, then the other. "Got two of 'em. But I come... in peace. Come in peace. I am _Fredzilla_."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Doc."

"...Y'look familiar," says Fredzilla, his eyes briefly focusing. He falls quiet for a moment, like he's thinking. "You... ever been to the twelve step place?"

"Don't think so. Anything hurt?"

"Dang. Dang, man, you should go, they have some _wicked_ cookies there."

"What happened?"

"We were... me and my buds, we were... Fred's Angels, dun dun dun..."

"Is he _drunk_?" someone asks behind him.

"No. Just concussed."

And from the looks of it, that's the only thing he is. His limbs are straight, he doesn't respond as if he is in pain; none of the prodding produces any kind of distress. No damage to his spine, nothing worse than bruises and a couple of long scratches that are simple enough to patch up. That suit is very well protected.

"Were writing. Fracking. Fighting!" Fredzilla says. "_Fighting_. And there's this dude, see, in this suit, made of metal? Exoskeleton. Like... like _Captain Warfight. _Issue six. You read that, man?" He didn't wait for an answer. "So... Exo-guy comes at me and I'm like, no way dude, and I totally spit fire at him, _Fredzilla, dun dun dun_, and he dodged and went after Gogo. And that's _stupid_, man, if you ever become a supervillian don't _ever_ go after Gogo because she will kick your... your... And she dodged. She dodged. And cut his arm off!"

What.

"Not like his actual arm though. His _exo arm_. So... so he's still got two arms! But only one of them is a super arm now!" Fredzilla tries to sit up. Doc pushes him back down. "Aaaand then he punched me. Heee punched me. And here I am!" His eyes focus again, briefly. "Dude, you look _really_ familiar."

Concussions had to stay awake, had to keep talking. Had to stay out of shock. With Fredzilla the talking isn't a problem, but the awake is. Doc nudges him every time he trails off.

"And then we were all, _he works there_, and I was like duh dude, it's a grudge! And... How'd you get here?"

He answers, briefly.

"You're _homeless? _Man, you should come live with me. I got room!"

The offer is tempting. But Doc is needed.

"Dang, man, hardcore. Can I like... get you a clinic or something? I'm... I'm gonna be all mysterious. Philanthropist with a dark secret. _Fredzilla_, _dun dun dun._"

He talks about comic books for ten minutes more before a red shape appears outside the hole in the wall. It has jets and wings and fists the size of a man's chest, and anyone who didn't scatter before scatters now.

"Fred?" it calls, in an even, _familiar_ voice. "My scans indicate..."

"Fredzilla in the house!" says Fredzilla. "Over here dude!"

"You are badly concussed," says the red robot.

"I'm _fine_, dude," says Fredzilla. "Doc here's fixing me up!"

The robot turns to him. He stares up at it. The deeper part of his mind is going crazy. This is important, _this is important_, but it won't tell him why.

"Hello," it says pleasantly. "I am a health care professional."

He shrugs, and steps back. "All yours."

The robot, instead of picking up Fredzilla, tilts it's head at him. "Your readings are... familiar."

"That's what _I_ said!" crows Fredzilla.

"You should probably get him to a real doctor."

"Yes," says the robot. It scoops up Fredzilla's suit, hooks it onto it's back, then scoops up Fredzilla. Totters out, flies away.

There's still a hole in the wall.

Everyone has to move.

* * *

><p>They're settled in the tunnels again. The rumors center around Frederick Lee, a wealthy college student who had suddenly donated huge sums to build three more shelters and a free clinic. Why, no one knows; <em>public relations<em> is the bitter theory, and others wonder what the kid did that he's trying to buy his way out of. But none of it will be finished this year; they'll have to survive the winter on their own.

He knows the truth as soon as he sees a clip of the interview in a bus station. It's Fredzilla, minus his suit and significantly cleaner. The interviewer asks the reason for the sudden generosity.

"I hit my head _bad_, a while back. Didn't have my phone, couldn't even see straight. Doc found me."

Instantly, every homeless eye turns to him.

"And hey, Doc, if you see this, way to be awesome! We should hang out. Anyway. He like, fixed me up, and I told him I'd get him a clinic."

The interview cuts away. He ducks out of the bus station, makes his way down to the tunnels. Everyone knows, everyone wants to talk about it.

Doc fixed someone famous.

* * *

><p>Everyone knows; Doc fixed Frederick Lee.<p>

And a mob group has been looking to get hooks in the Lee family for a while now.

He's warned the first time, minutes before they arrive. A man that who'd had his fingers broken by the mob and set by Doc sprints into the tunnels, yelling for Doc to run. He doesn't like the idea of running, but everyone else _does_. Even the sick that he's been tending to drag their blankets to the shadows, and he's forced out by the messenger with barely time to scoop up his pack.

He hides on the fire escape of a run-down apartment building, and watches them run along beneath him. They have guns, and don't even bother to hide them. He waits until they're gone, then waits a few moments more before climbing down.

When he makes his way back to the tunnels, people avoid him again.

_The mob is after Doc,_ the rumor says. And only the truly sick will come near him.

He buys a sick mask, only half to avoid the desperate cough that's going around the camps. People trust him more when they can't see his face.

He helps them anyway.


	3. Spring

Winter, _finally_, passes into spring. Construction begins on the new shelters, and some people drag Doc along to the groundbreaking of the clinic. There's Frederick Lee, spinning a shovel like a sign until he knocks his helmet off. The real doctors invited to the groundbreaking rush to him, and he pushes them away with an easy laugh.

The speech is honest and rambling, a heartfelt thanks to Doc, again, with liberal references to his fictional heroes. Doc catches himself smiling under his mask; it's been a long time since he smiled. He used to, and he wonders what happened.

The groundbreaking ends with a luncheon, and there's food set aside for the homeless. He has to take off his mask to eat, and Frederick catches sight of him.

"Doc!" the man says, waving. "Hey!"

He waves back hesitantly, but those around him push him forwards. Cameras reappear, and he tries to muster the smile from earlier.

"Man," says Frederick, as he shakes his hand, then pulls him down to sit next to him at folding table. "I thought I must have imagined it when I hit my head. But you look _really_ familiar."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Where you from?"

It's his least favorite question. Everyone else has a story to tell, but not him. All he has is ten thousand medical procedures, neatly archived in the back of his head. His answer is honest, in any case.

He just shrugs.

"You don't know?"

"Concussion. I got nothing," he says, shrugging again and tapping the burn scar on his forehead. "Doc's the only name I have."

"Duuude," says Frederick. There's a curious light in his eyes now. "...Y'know, you ever been to SFIT?"

"Don't think so."

"Man." Frederick watches him for a moment longer. "You should go. Meet some people. I got some friends there. You'd like 'em."

The luncheon ends, and Frederick sends him off with a bag full of sandwiches, and a backpack full of high-end first aid kits. He goes through them later, and smiles underneath his mask. The sandwiches buy friends for a night.

And he looks up SFIT on the bus schedule.

Maybe he'll go one day.

* * *

><p>The warmer weather takes the frostbite cases away with it, and most of the coughs too. He keeps his mask, though; the mob is still interested, and now they have pictures. He can't spend too long in any one place before they track him down.<p>

The tunnels by the bay, an abandoned warehouse, an empty lot, the alley by Yama's, an overgrown park. He stays two or three days at best, a week in one case. The rumors let the sick find him, but the mob is never long after.

He hears about them through those same rumors. But after a while, the mob aren't the only ones arriving too late.

A lady on a fancy yellow bike asked about him, a patient says as he cleans out a bad scrape. Another tells him about a boy that they saw at Yama's once, asking around with a picture and a giant walking balloon. Frederick Lee caught a lot of attention when he arrived right after Doc left. A blonde girl and a big man with dreadlocks visited a camp together, passed out soap and sandwiches, and showed picture after picture, both the pictures from the groundbreaking ceremony and others of him without a scar.

He wonders who they are. The deeper part of his mind recognizes the descriptions, but refuses to surrender anything more. Maybe they know him.

And then the mob arrives again, and he runs without having a chance to think about it.

He only finds out later. The mob arrived at the same time as the lady with the bike and the blonde girl, and rumors of shooting echo around the camps for a week. Someone proudly brags that they talked to Frederick Lee, told him why Doc kept moving. Frederick had been upset, apparently.

He wants to ask more questions, but someone yells out about the mob. He has to run.

* * *

><p>The superheroes go after the mob. They work with the police, and there are busts everywhere. The camps can't form before they scatter. He treats gunshot wounds and runs out of gauze.<p>

He sees them fighting, once. They're not all bulletproof, and the kid on the red robot draws the gunfire away from the others. Bullets ping off cherry-red metal and leave silver circles behind. The man with the knife arms cuts through anything thrown at him, then cuts through guns when he gets close enough. The girl in yellow disrupts the mob, separates them and trips them up, everywhere at once. Fredzilla drops from above and crushes a getaway car, scares them into scattering.

Once they're disarmed, the group herds them back together. Then the girl in pink yells. Her teammates dive away, and she throws something. It hits in the center of the mob group, and when the smoke clears they're stuck to the ground.

The police swarm in. Arrests are made, and the heroes group together again. The kid on the red robot is _tiny_ compared to the others, but their body language says he's the leader. He turns, examining the gathered crowd. His face is masked by his helmet, but he seems to be searching.

Doc tugs at his own mask, and turns away.

* * *

><p>He manages to keep a bed at the shelter for over a week. Real doctors pass through every few days, thanks to the funding from Frederick Lee, and when they're around he learns what he can. He knows a lot already, remarks one. Was he an EMT?<p>

Maybe. He shrugs, and when the doctors are gone he works even harder.

Everyone's on edge; they don't want to turn Doc away but the threat of the mob is not to be taken lightly. He's pretty sure that they've got better things to worry about; between the police and the superheroes the mob isn't even thinking about him.

But he isn't sure, and he picks a bed near an emergency exit.

He's there for ten days before one of Frederick Lee's friends finds the shelter.

"I heard there's someone named Doc here?" a light, high voice asks at reception, when he's changing a bandage in the lobby. She gets a once-over from the volunteer at the desk for that. But she doesn't look like a mob member. Long blonde hair, big glasses with bright pink frames, a yellow sweater that falls like a lab coat, heels that take her from tall to really, really tall. The volunteer doesn't know quite what to say, so he saves them from having to choose.

"Hey," he says. "Give me a minute."

He looks back to the bandage he's changing, but she creeps up behind him like a shadow, and he can feel her eyes on him. He finishes, and sends his patient off with an admonition to keep it clean, then turns to face her.

She holds her elbows close to her body, narrow and nervous, like she's afraid she'll hit someone if she moves. The lobby is nearly empty this time of day; she shouldn't be worried. He smiles at her, trying to calm her down, then realizes he's still wearing his mask.

"You look so much like him," she whispers, almost to herself.

"Who?"

"Sorry! Sorry, sorry. We haven't been introduced. I'm Honey Lemon," she says, offering her hand. Her nerves are obvious in every movement. He shakes it casually.

"Doc," he says.

"So you're the one that helped Fred?"

"He doing better?" he asks. "Couldn't tell if he was still concussed or not, last I saw him."

"Yes! He's fine. He… always acts like that." She swallows hard. "Fred… says you can't remember anything?"

"Not since last fall," he admits.

"When?"

He shrugs. "Hit my head pretty bad," he says, tapping the burn scar. "Short term never made it to long term for a while there."

"Oh." She falls silent for a moment, and her eyes trace the contours of his face. "What… happened?"

"Dunno," he says with another shrug. "Hit my head."

"It looks burned."

"It was."

She looks like she desperately wants to ask something, but she doesn't. He watches her for a moment, then breaks the silence.

"You from SFIT?"

"Yes!" she nearly explodes with excitement. "You remember it?"

"No," he says. "...Fred mentioned it." She wilts a bit, and he says quickly, "He said I should come visit."

"You should!" she says quickly. "Everyone would love to meet you!"

"Maybe sometime," he says, then pauses, thinking. "Y'know, I've heard about you. Your friends, I guess."

"Us?"

"Yeah. People coming around asking for me. Rumors spread fast in the camps. I hadn't heard about you in a while."

"Yeah…" she laughs, a bit nervously. "We've been busy. Finals."

"Already?" he asks. "Didn't think those were coming up for a couple weeks."

"Final projects," she amends. "Hiro's thing for EE 202 is _fantastic._"

The name strikes him, and he pauses noticeably. "_Hiro?_" he asks softly.

"Yeah," she says, and if he thought she looked careful _before_… "Do you… remember…"

He closes his eyes, and thinks for a long moment. "No," he finally says. The deeper parts of his brain surrenders nothing. "I… wish I did."

"I wish you did too," she says, almost mournfully.

"Look," he says after a minute. "You think I look like someone. You and Fred both. Can you just tell me who?"

"Tadashi," she says softly.

He wants to ask more questions. But someone comes running in, blood streaming from a narrow wound that looks like they were grazed by a gun, nearly runs him over. He has to run, _right now_, they blame him! Sit down, he orders. The wound is shallow, enough so that it might scab over on its own if the heart rate goes back down. He cleans it and applies a row of bandages, though the man objects. Frederick Lee's brought down the superheroes on the mob, because of _him_, because of _Doc._ He has to run, they're coming right now!

The volunteer at the desk is already calling the police. The girl in the yellow sweater grabs his sleeve as he shrugs his backpack on.

"We can help!" she says.

"I'm not dragging you into this too," he says, fast and harsher than he meant, and breaks her grip.

"But we can…"

There's a crack of a gunshot outside. He sprints for the back exit.

* * *

><p>He stays alone for the rest of the spring.<p> 


	4. Summer

Summer rolls in with a week-long thunderstorm. The air is a wall of water, and everyone has to head for higher ground. The tunnels are utterly flooded. The abandoned warehouses are overcrowded and muggy. One of the shelters gets a leak in the roof, and he helps with the bucket brigade for the one night he stays there. There are power outages all across the city, and everyone warns to watch out for fallen lines. It's too wet to work a corner, too wet to do odd jobs, too wet to see past the end of a block.

He pulls a kid from a flooded drainage ditch one day, knocks the water out of his lungs, helps him get home. The parents want to thank him somehow, but he can't put them at risk. All he accepts is a stack of sandwiches and a pair of dry socks, and he tells them not to mention it to anyone. They don't listen, and in the bus stop the next day he catches the tail end of a news segment about the mysterious _Doc_ saving a boy's life. He doesn't sleep that night, and instead spends it trekking across the city away from that neighborhood, into one of the steeper, hillier regions that he isn't as familiar with. He crashes in the morning in a park bathroom, and wraps himself in the driest blanket he has while his clothes drip like the rain outside.

The storm finally trails off that afternoon, and he shrugs his clothes back on and heads outside. The sky is blue patchwork, and the ground squelches beneath his feet. His clothes and sick mask, though damp, are clean. There's a high, bright laughter echoing through the park as a pair of young children jump in and out of puddles. He settles on a park bench and finishes the last of the sandwiches. It's soggy. But for the first time in a while, he's happy.

He picks up a bus map to try and figure out where he is. He's not too far from one of the new shelters under construction, and he heads in that direction. It's going to be huge, three stories with a wide footprint. The walls and windows are already on, though still covered in branded plastic, and it shimmers as it dries. Coming soon, reads the sign in front of the construction site. Hamada Memorial Center, homeless shelter and employment training center.

_Hamada_. He's heard the name before in a news segment; he thinks it might've been about something on the SFIT campus. And that one was _memorial_ too, if he's remembering right. Whoever Hamada was must've impacted a lot of people.

He hops the fence, and explores the building site for a few hours. It's going to be gorgeous, and he wonders how many beds it'll have.

Then the sun falls behind the horizon, and the wind picks up. He heads for a tunnel.

* * *

><p>The mob doesn't have the same influence in this part of town, and after a few days he finds a camp that doesn't mind having him. There's enough fear to keep the gossip down, though, and he stays a relative secret for almost a month. Then someone comes to the camp drunk as anything, bragging that they talked to one of the superheroes!<p>

He knows where this is going. He starts packing up.

And yeah, they're looking for Doc! Wouldn't say why. Which one, someone else asks. The green one. Kinda prissy. Gave him _soap_, see? Knife-hands is a bit of a neat freak, someone else agrees. Apparently he goes back and re-cut things if he cuts them wrong the first time; they saw him practicing in a junkyard but he always does it.

Did you tell him? Yeah, sure! They're the good guys, aren't they?

He finishes putting his backpack back together, says his hasty goodbyes, and starts walking.

He doesn't make it more than two blocks.

"Hey! Hey, you Doc?" A man's voice calls from behind him. He turns to see a man, broad-shouldered in turquoise-green armor running after him. "Hang on a minute!"

He stops, if only because running would draw more attention. The man catches up, and they start walking again.

"Hey," he says congenially. "You're Doc?"

"Yeah."

"Man, _finally_. We've been looking for you."

"Yeah, I've heard." He glances over to a passing car. "You're not the only ones."

"What?"

"Mob."

"Oh. Yeah." The man nods. "We've been working to try to stop them; you've probably heard about it."

"Yeah, I know." He nods. "They blame me for that."

"Blame… For what?"

"For you being after them."

"_What_?" the man sputters. "But you had nothing to… We did that on our own! They nearly shot Gogo! Isn't _that_ enough reason for us to..."

He shrugs. "I don't know. They used to think I could influence Frederick Lee. Now I think it's just revenge."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Your friend Honey can back me up," he says. "She was there."

"Yeah, I know she said that… Wait. How'd you know Honey Lemon was one of us?" asks the superhero, his voice suddenly nervous.

"It's not hard," he says. "I met _Fredzilla_. The rest isn't rocket science."

"You haven't told anyone, have you?"

"Don't see why I should."

"...Right," says the superhero, and his posture closes off. The revelation has put him on the defensive, and whatever questions he would've asked, he probably won't now. "Anyway…"

"Why are you trying to find me, anyway?" Doc asks. "You can probably afford a real doctor, so it's not that."

"It's… Well, Fred worries about you."

"I'm fine," he says. "If Fred didn't worry about me my life would be a lot simpler."

"He meant well!" says the superhero. "And he really does want to make it up."

"I'll be fine."

"It's the _mob_, man!"

"Yeah, I kinda noticed."

"Look, just come with us. Fred's got that big house, he can hide you. You don't have to live like this!"

"People _need me_!" he says, turning to face the big man. The superhero stumbles backwards. "I know, I could run from this if I wanted. If nothing else, there's a southbound train leaving twice a day. But people can't afford real doctors, and I can _help_!"

Something about his little speech triggered something in the hero, and he can see it in his posture and the bottom half of his face. The big man is examining him, now, with an intensity that he wasn't before.

"...Y'know," the hero says after a minute. "You ever been to SFIT?"

"_No!_" he answers, frustrated. "Every one of you has asked me that!"

"Yeah, well… It's just… you're a lot like him."

"I don't want to hear it," he says, and stalks off in disgust. The hero tries to follow. But he's easy to lose; he balks at every dirty alleyway, and before long Doc is alone again.

* * *

><p>He spends a few days by the tracks. The train leaves, twice a day, and every time he contemplates getting on it. The mob isn't everywhere. There are other cities, with milder winters and less superheroes. Maybe he can find Buddy and Roger again.<p>

Then someone asks for Doc. He spends the night with a distraught mother, bringing down a child's fever and helping them cough up the mucus in their lungs. The kid sleeps peacefully come morning, and the mother reveals she'd been praying to find him.

He stays in San Fransokyo.

* * *

><p>The mob is shrinking. But they're getting more violent as the police close in on their leader. Every arrest is all over the news, and he watches in a bus stop one rainy day. He sees gunshot victims wheeled away to ambulances and the superheroes fighting for their lives. A lucky camera got a clip of the kid on the red robot, the leader, being shot, and the enormous dent it the bullet leaves in the purple armor. They try to get an interview, but none of the heroes will hold still long enough.<p>

One of the mob's leaders spots him on the street one evening. He gets away, but a bullet grazes his side and stains his clothes with blood. It's not serious, but it _hurts_, with an intensity he hasn't felt since his burns healed.

He has to stay still while it heals, and he ends up in a bot fighting hotspot for a week. The injuries he treats are minor; small cuts from sharp metal, solder burns, the occasional concussion when parts fly into the crowd. He watches the fights, comments on the bots, holds conversations with the builders as he patches them up. It's only when the bettors start asking him for advice that he realizes how much he knows.

His side heals, and he moves on.

* * *

><p>It's late in the evening, and he's headed to a shelter, hoping he can get a bed. The night is dark and comfortably warm, but the street is lit by a hundred neon signs, and the sidewalk is nearly empty.<p>

Which is probably why the bicycle messenger is going so fast when she hits him.

"Watch where you're going!" she says, irritated, even as she helps him up.

"I was," he says. He manages to stand. She's tiny, fashionably dressed, with streaks of purple in her dark hair like he sees on teenage runaways. But something about her triggers the deeper part of his mind, and he examines her carefully. She catches on.

"What?" And then she examines him back. "You!"

"What?"

"You're Doc!"

"Yeah?"

"We've been looking for you!"

"We?" He steps back, and gets a better look at her bike. The wheels are suspended, hovering in thin air, and he realizes. "Oh. Oh no."

"What?"

"You're with those heroes, aren't you?"

She grabs him, and her grip is remarkably strong for such a small person. "Keep it down!"

"Let go," he says, and twists away. "But you are."

"So?" She glares at him. Her glare could probably boil water. "Where have you _been_?"

"Around," he says. "I got shot."

"You _what_?"

"Got shot," he repeats. "And it's not something I want to do again. So if you'll excuse me…"

She grabs him again. "We're trying to _help_ you," she says. "You told Wasabi you'd be fine but it's clear you're _not_. You can't help anyone if you're dead."

"I'll be fine," he says.

"Liar," she says through gritted teeth.

"Look. You have better things to do. Aren't you supposed to deliver that package?" He gestures to the back of her bike. "You don't have time to deal with me."

She glares at him for a moment longer, then spits, "Fine." She puts a hand to his shoulder, and forces him down onto a step. "You stay _there_. I'll be back."

And she's gone, biking away at lightning speed.

He gets up, dusts himself off, and runs in the opposite direction.

* * *

><p>He's treating a sprained wrist in the bus stop when it comes on the news. The first of the three shelters is set to open the next week. Frederick Lee, all smiles and rambling stories, invites everyone to the opening. He hopes, he says when a reporter asks about Doc, that Doc is alright. But he isn't expecting to see him.<p>

The rest of the news is about the superheroes, and the mob. The mob is almost gone, and supposedly the police are closing in on their suspected leader, a man named Alexander Necchi. They expect him to be caught within a week.

His patient remarks that since the mob won't be around anymore, he should go. Maybe he can convince Frederick Lee to build a fourth.

Maybe, he says.

* * *

><p>He <em>shouldn't<em> go to the opening, but he finds himself there anyway. _Hamada Memorial Center_ is written in brass letters above the door, and the whole thing is gleamingly new, polished for the television cameras with a thick red ribbon stretched in front of the door. It looks more like a hotel than a homeless shelter.

The organizer gets up and gives a speech about it's features and the services it'll offer - industrial kitchen for job training, remedial classes, publicly available computers to enable email contact with employers, private rooms for displaced families, a psychological counseling center, a very basic clinic. It has everything to help people back onto their feet, and he's _proud_, for some reason; proud of Frederick Lee for doing so much in return for so little. He smiles underneath his mask.

Frederick Lee gets up, and gives a speech a lot like the one from the groundbreaking. He's been coached, though, and it shows - only three references to a comic book and one to a movie. They hand him the scissors. He opens the shelter.

Doc's one of the first ones in. He checks out the clinic as hundred of others file into the shelter behind him. The clinic is tiny, but very well equipped. He's looking it over when someone catches his shoulder.

"I was hoping you'd be here!" says Fred, with a grin that splits his face in half. "Good to see you!"

"Hey," he says quietly. "You really did a good job on this place."

"Nah," Fred says. "They've had plans for someplace like this for a while. I just paid for it. The other two are gonna be even bigger!" He pulls Doc back out of the clinic. "Come on, I'll give you the tour!"

He does. The building is well laid out; nothing fancy, but clean lines and clear paths that can handle a lot of people. And _lots_ of beds. Fred rambles on for a few rooms about how he wanted it to be more defensible against zombies, but this is okay too. There's even a laundry room; Fred doesn't do laundry and tells him so in detail.

They make it back to the lobby, finally. Fred has a rally at SFIT he has to be there for, apparently he's the mascot, but otherwise he'd totally stay to chill. Doc walks out with him.

They're grabbed by a superhero the minute they walk out the door.

Doc struggles, but Fred gets his feet beneath him and runs along with the hero, helping to pull Doc. He glances behind them as they run.

"Oh, man, is it Necchi?"

"Yes! Move!"

They stop behind a cream colored van. "Your suit's in the van," says the green one - Wasabi - tapping the car. "The others are on their way."

"Right." Fred says, then turns to Doc. "Don't worry dude. We are _on_ this."

Wasabi leans around the edge of the car as Fred climbs in. "I see three… four. Five. Wait, two cars now. Dang, that is a nice car!"

"It's Necchi, man," drawls Fred. "But he's no match for _Fredzilla_."

Three of the men enter the building. The two others approach the fancier car, and say something into the window. There's a pause. They nod, and say something into a cell phone.

A huge, rolling _boom_ rattles everything. The building bursts into flames.

"_What_?" says Wasabi, his voice jumping an octave. "The _shelter_?"

"They think I'm inside!" says Doc. He tries to stand, but Wasabi grabs him.

"No way, man; they want to kill you and you are staying _here_."

He wants to object. A girl in yellow armor dashes past the front of the building, drawing a spatter of gunfire before vanishing around the corner and reappearing right behind them. Wasabi is dialing 911 as she punches Doc in the arm.

"You!" she hisses. "I knew I'd catch up with you eventually!"

He's interrupted before he can respond, as the last members of the superhero team arrive. The red robot touches down with utter precision. The girl in pink and the kid slide off its back.

"What's happening?" asks the kid.

"Necchi! See?" Fredzilla rolls out of the car, monster suit intact, and points to the car and the men outside it.

"I see, yeah. Wasabi?"

"Fire trucks on their way," Wasabi says quickly.

"Why the shelter?" asks the girl in pink.

"They think I'm inside," repeats Doc. "Let go!" He shrugs off Wasabi's grip, and stands. "There are people in there!"

The girl in yellow glares at him, then stands. "I got Necchi," she says. "Honey Lemon, cover me."

Honey Lemon nods, and starts pressing buttons on her purse. She throws something, and it hits the car. The two men stumble back, coughing, as a yellow substance covers the scene. Roller-skates-girl is gone in a flash, surging towards the mobsters. One raises his gun to fire at her; nothing happens. She hits him like a ton of bricks.

"How long for the fire department?" asks the kid.

Wasabi repeats the question to his phone, then: "Five minutes."

"My scans are showing: respiratory distress," says the big red robot. "Many will not last that long."

That's all Doc needs to hear. He's running, out of Wasabi's reach in seconds. The kid is sprinting after him on skinny legs. He catches the back of Doc's jacket, and pulls him back from the door.

"You can't go in there!" he says. "You'll be killed!" Doc shrugs out of his jacket. The kid grabs at his shirt collar, but instead gets the strings of his sick mask. It falls away.

"Those people are in danger _because of me_!" Doc says, facing the kid for a moment. "I'm going to help!"

Something paralyzes the kid, if just for a moment, and that's all he needs to run inside. He can hear the kid stumbling after him, yelling for him to wait. _Tadashi!_ he thinks he hears. He keeps going, straight into the heat.

People are panicking, and no one knows the building well enough to head straight for the exit. He herds them towards the lobby, helps up those that stumble, grabs fire extinguishers and puts out smaller blazes. There isn't much to burn, but there's something choking in the air, some component of the bomb or whatever they set off to kill him. They must've turned off the water, too, because the sprinklers haven't turned on. He helps a family out of one of the private rooms, carries the smallest girl into the lobby before heading back in.

There's a _boomf_ like a muffled explosion from underneath the building, and people scream as the floor rattles. He helps a man with a missing leg into the lobby before the pink girl - Honey Lemon - nearly knocks him over coming up the stairs.

She's talking into a headset, and he catches part of it. "...Basement's coated in fire suppressant, but I can't figure out the gas - Gogo, are they…" Then she's gone, sprinted off to another wing of the building. He leaves his passenger on the steps and runs back in as fire engines roar into the street behind him.

The ground floor is clear. But the fire is climbing. The upward stairs are scattered with people, rushing down like a waterfall. He pulls the stumblers up and sends them out before they can be trampled, then makes his way up. Families with young children need the most help, and three kids cling to him as he runs back down. Another _boomf,_ and he sees this one; Honey Lemon throws something into a blazing room before a cloud of cold blue spreads across the fire. He drops the kids outside, and takes a moment to breathe before he heads back in.

The robot is hovering outside the upper windows, taking two or three people in its arms before landing, releasing, taking off again. Fredzilla does about the same; he jumps up to an upper floor, grabs someone, and jumps back down with an impressive speed. He doesn't see the others. He heads back in.

He checks rooms as he moves. The girl in yellow, Gogo, shoots past him with an infant in her arms. He helps a man he recognizes, paralyzed from the waist down, and helps him down the stairs and back into his wheelchair, then heads back up to the third floor.

It's almost empty. But the fire isn't just a fire anymore, it's an inferno. Flames snatch at his clothes and make his old burn scars surge back to life in remembered pain. He hears someone scream, down the hall, and dashes through.

He manages to talk a scared girl out of an isolated corner, and dashes back into the hallway with her in his arms. Then the floor rumbles, and the ceiling collapses in front of him. He takes an involuntary step back.

Then Wasabi bursts through, laser knives an odd blue in the world of orange, and clears a path.

"Doc!" he says. "You gotta get out of here!"

"I'm going," he says. "How many more…"

"Baymax says six. She's one, I'm two, you're three." He pauses. "Okay, four, Honey and Gogo are out."

"Where's the sixth?"

"Just go!" says Wasabi, and shoves him down the hall.

He meets Gogo, coming back up, and hands the girl over. "Get her out!" he orders, and for once Gogo has nothing to say. He turns back to meet Wasabi coming down.

"Where's the sixth?" he repeats.

"It's _Hiro!_" Wasabi says. "Move!"

They almost make it into the lobby before Wasabi hears something to make him stop. "...Oh no."

"What?"  
>"<em>Hiro!<em>" he says, whirls, and runs back up the stairs.

"What?" Doc repeats, following.

"Another collapse!" Wasabi says. "I can handle it; you get out!"

"Not until everyone's safe!"

There's no more time for arguing. They round the corner to see a tiny figure sprawled underneath a burning beam. He's fighting, trying to free himself, but he's no match for the weight pinning him down. Wasabi skids to a stop beside him.

"Are you okay?"

"Get the beam!" says the kid.

Wasabi glances up at it. "I can't! If I cut it, the whole weight's coming down on you."

The kid wants to say something, but Doc cuts him off. "You cut, I push. If he curls up it'll miss his legs."

Wasabi looks to him, then the kid, then the fire sprouting from the beam. Then his knives flash into existence. "When you're ready."

"On three." He lines up his shoulder, as close as he can get without being burned. He can feel the kid staring up at him. "One." The scar on his head is throbbing. "Two." Wasabi puts his knives in place. "Three!"

He jams his shoulder into the beam with all his weight. It _burns_, he hears his skin crackle, and then the beam moves. It falls and barely clears the kid. But the leg where he was pinned is broken; no way he'll be able to walk. Doc scoops the kid up; he's boneless in his arms, probably passed out from shock when the beam moved. He stands, turns, runs. Wasabi follows close behind. They make it into the stairwell, then the building shifts, and Wasabi has to cut the door off its hinges and kick it into the lobby. They make it out in a shower of sparks.

The front of the building is chaos. Families huddle together, broken apart by EMTs trying to check for burns and smoke inhalation. Fire trucks are crowded against ambulances, hoses running from every hydrant criss-crossing the square. Someone rushes up with a wheeled stretcher, and he sets the kid down without thinking and turns back to the building. He scans the windows - was that really everyone? He has to…

A small hand grabs at his wrist, and he turns to see the kid holding on to him.

"Don't you _dare_," says the kid. "Bonehead."

"Bonehead to you too," he says, without thinking. "Fine."

They wheel the kid away. The robot follows close behind. Wasabi puts a hand on his shoulder, carefully avoiding the burn.

"Go get someone to look at that," he says. "He'll be fine."

"Is everyone out?"

"Baymax says no lifesigns."

...Oh. "And that mob guy?"

Wasabi shrugs in the direction of a police car. Gogo stands over it, glaring fiercely. "All wrapped up. Seriously. Get that looked at."

"...Right."

They follows the stretcher.

"Hiro," he overhears, from the robot. "I cannot access my medical faculties while armored."

"Not here," says Wasabi, intervening. "It's a tripping hazard. Leave it in the van."

"Where is the van?"

He gestures over his shoulder, and the robot rockets away, leaving the kid with the paramedics. He's fighting them, trying to sit up. Doc pushes him down.

"You're gonna make it worse," he says. "Stay down."

The kid, bonelessly, obeys.

"I need to check for concussion," says the paramedic.

"Yeah?" asks the kid.

"So helmet off," says Doc, then looks to another medic. "Can I get something for this?"

He doesn't realize how much his shoulder hurts until the wet towel hits it. He slumps in relief against one of the ambulances, and as the adrenaline drains away he begins to feel his body again. He'll get up in a minute, he tells himself. There are a lot of people here who could use help, and not enough help to go around.

Then a giant white balloon totters past.

The deeper part of his mind rises as the adrenaline fades. Baymax. _Baymax_. Carbon fiber skeleton, vinyl exterior, magnetic servos, _This is the 84th test of my robotics project_. Personal healthcare companion. _On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your pain?_ The scanner, months of work on the scanner. _I am satisfied with my care_.

"Your leg is: broken," says Baymax, standing over the boy again.

"_Y'think_?" says the kid.

"The joint is undamaged. It should heal without the need for surgery."

"Great."

"Your current medical care is adequate," says Baymax. "Shall I tend to other patients?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

Baymax turns around, and faces Doc. Doc can't remember standing, but he knows he is now, because his knees are threatening to collapse. He's shaking, bad.

"I will scan you now." A pause. "Scan complete. Diagnosis: Second degree burns on the left shoulder. First degree burns on both arms. Smoke inhalation. High levels of carbon monoxide in the blood." Another pause. "Although your elevated adrenal levels indicate that you may not be feeling your pain, you should rest. Rest will aid your immune system in fighting off any potential infection."

"Is it him?" the boy asks, behind the robot.

"I have said before," the robot says, turning again. "My scans can only be used for positive identification within a few weeks of the initial scan, and less if the patient undergoes a major lifestyle change."

"Is it?"

The robot pauses for a long moment. Doc takes a couple shaky steps forwards. The kid's lost his helmet, and his hair is bushed up like a black dandelion. He fights the paramedics again, sits up. And he meet's Doc's eye.

"...Hiro," Doc says softly.

And faints.

* * *

><p>A.N.: One more chapter after this.<p> 


	5. End

He drifts in and out of consciousness; for how long, he doesn't know.

"Don't you… leave…"

"Is…"

"How do we know?"

"Malnutrition… lotta folks get like that, when they're on the streets too long."

"Positive identification… not easy…"

"Declared dead… You're sure?"

"Exhaustion, both physical and…"

"He looks so…"

"I can't believe…. didn't see it."

"Callaghan… drop the manslaughter charge?... years off his sentence."

"Needs time… heal. His body…"

"Wake _up_, bonehead…"

"Alive?"

He sleeps.

* * *

><p>The snapping whine of a fluorescent bulb is finally what wakes him. It's persistent enough that he can't quite go back to sleep. He opens his eyes to stare at a white-tiled ceiling.<p>

He's _warm_, he thinks, warm all over, with soft clean sheets that don't rub at his skin. No wonder he's been sleeping. He could sleep forever in a bed like this.

He thinks for a long moment, then puts his hand to his shoulder. Thickly bandaged; the skin beneath feels kind of damp, and _very_ sore when he moves the arm. There are patches of bandage on his hands as well. He moves the hand to his face. What little facial hair he had is gone, and his cheek feels less bony than he remembers. The scar on his forehead is still there.

He sits up, checks himself over. No IVs, but there's a sore place in the crook of his elbow where one has been recently. His throat is sore - feeding tube. But there is still an oxygenation monitor on his finger. He pauses, thinking about what that means. He's had breathing problems. But out of danger. Expected to wake up today.

He scoots to the end of the bed, and grabs his chart.

Right on all counts. Though he's surprised to find his malnutrition listed as _severe_; that explains the feeding tube. He finds his admission date, on the day of the fire, but that would only tell him anything if he knew today's date too. He reads through the charts, flips the page, before something strikes him. He goes back to the first page. Reads the name.

_Tadashi Hamada_.

_Hamada_? Like the building?

He's interrupted before he can read further. A nurse rolls a cart in, and catches sight of him. "Mr. Hamada?" she says. He just stares, and she tries again. "...Doc?"

"...Yeah?"

"You're awake," she says softly. "He's awake!" she calls to the hallway.

There's a rush, then, of doctors and nurses; questions about what he remembers, a battery of mental tests. Some worried whispering about his continued amnesia. He asks a few questions of his own.

Where am I? San Fransokyo General. How long have I been here? A few days. The fire, is everyone alright? No casualties, only two major cases, lots of smoke inhalation. The shelter? Salvageable. But won't reopen this year.

"My chart has a name on it."

An uncomfortable silence, then. A doctor puts a hand to his arm. "It does."

"Am I really…" He swallows. "...Tadashi Hamada?"

"We think so," the doctor says. "Your hands were still a little burned when we did the fingerprints. But as far as anyone can tell… Yeah."

"They said I looked like him," he says softly.

"You really do," says a nurse. "Especially once we got some food in you."

"It's pretty conclusive, all together," says the doctor. "You've got a lot of people who want to say hello."

"Who?"

Nobody has a chance to answer. There's a commotion in the hall, a nurse admonishing someone to _get back here _and the lopsided footsteps of someone really not listening. The doctor moves to the door to hold someone back.

"Is he awake?" the kid - _Hiro_ - asks.

"You need to rest that leg," the doctor says.

"Is he awake?" Hiro repeats.

In a softer voice: "_Yes_. But..."

"Tadashi is suffering from memory loss," says Baymax. "It is best not to overwhelm him." A pause, a shuffling sound, and a stifled squawk of indignation. Then, "There. The leg is rested."

"Put me _down_, Baymax!"

"Your care is my first priority."

"Unbelievable."

"Is that…" he says. "Hiro?"

Silence on the floor. Then, the robot shuffles its way in, a skinny teen cradled in its huge arms. There's a cast on the top half of his leg. They stare at each other for a moment. Hiro speaks first.

"Do you… remember me?"

He swallows hard. "I…" A shared room. A garage workshop. _Unbelievable_. Years and years of scattered Christmases and birthdays. A graduation. His eyes, his hands, running a comb through untamable hair… A floodgate opens in the deeper part of his mind. "I…"

"Exposure to familiar persons and settings is the primary treatment for total amnesia," says Baymax brightly.

Riding a moped through a dark alley, his brother clinging to his back. His _brother_. A funeral, a small hand in his own. A cafe with a cat statue. Laughter. Pastries. Yelling, wrestling, _Aunt Cass! Tadashi's being a bonehead_. A weight atop his chest after _I had a nightmare_. A cat in rocket boots.

Months, _years_, at his brother's side.

"Your heart rate is increasing," Baymax observes. "Perhaps we should…"

"Hiro," he says breathlessly. "I remember you."

Everyone is watching.

"You're my brother."

"Tadashi," says Hiro softly. He nearly falls out of Baymax's arms. Then the robot totters over, past the doctors and nurses, and sets Hiro down on the bed.

"Hugging is an appropriate…" he starts.

Neither one of them cares what he says next.

"Crying is also an appropriate response," Baymax says after a few moments. "It is alright to cry."

A nurse drags Baymax out of the room.

* * *

><p>It doesn't end that simply. There's loads of paperwork to be done, red tape strung all around <em>legally dead<em> to fight through. He doesn't remember everything yet, and he won't for a long time; every few hours he finds something new that he knows, every few days he's practically knocked over by sheer force of the memories.

Aunt Cass visits, and spends half an hour bawling into his shoulder, hugging him so hard that he begins to worry about his lungs. He's alive, he's alive, she thought she'd lost him. Her visit overlaps with a mealtime, and she makes him eat _everything_, then promises to bring some of her eclairs, which, she assures him, he loves.

Everyone has to hear what happened, and he tells the story to a familiar group, who are all skipping their first classes of the semester to come visit. Honey Lemon wonders what happened to Buddy and Roger. Hiro's fists clench when he talks about the swarm, about the man in the mask. Fred laughs when he tells him what he said, concussed out of his right mind, and sings Fredzilla's theme song. Wasabi winces at the description of the camps. Gogo talks about when she and Honey Lemon ran into the mob, giving him the details that the rumors never did.

It's not like he never left. It's like he's come back.

"Sorry, man, didn't mean to make so much trouble for you."

"You lived in a _bot fighting_ place?"

"Did Professor Callaghan hurt any of your friends?"

"_Homeless people_ are calling me a neat freak now?"

"If you go anywhere near a burning building, _ever again_, I will _end_ you."

They all agree on that.

He looks in the mirror, after they're gone. His face isn't quite the one from the mirror in his memories, and he doubts it'll ever be quite the same. The scar might fade eventually, the doctors say. The experiences won't.

Both he and Hiro are released, with a strict admonition to eat well and get lots of rest. Baymax impressed the doctors, and they say he's welcome back. The robot promises, in his own way, to make sure they follow orders. Aunt Cass closes the cafe to welcome them home. The eclairs are just as good as she said they were. He helps Hiro up the stairs. His half of the room is the same as he remembers. Cleaner, maybe.

He goes to the old shelter one day, once Hiro has been persuaded to go back to classes. Everyone recognizes him, congratulates him, and he ends up treating a couple sprains and a nasty scrape. He promises to bring Baymax next time.

They finally drag him to SFIT. The Tadashi Hamada Memorial Building is huge and gorgeous and _entirely inappropriate_, and he can't look at the huge portrait of him hanging in the lobby without feeling like he's going to spontaneously combust.

The labs are better. There are memories waiting to ambush him in every room, so they give him time. He sits alone in the workspace that used to be his, stares out the window, looks down to where Baymax's charger used to sit. There's a giant red fist on one shelf, and he wants to hear the story behind that.

Hiro thinks maybe he could go here again.

Maybe he could.

And Tadashi smiles.


End file.
